Hey you! Ever dreamt of a day when a tedious road journey could be broken up with a delicious steaming plate of Ballotine of Anjou Pigeon?

Of course you have, we all have. And soon maybe we will. Channel 4 has poached crazy food scientist Heston Blumenthal away from BBC2 and given him his own show. Heston's first task? Turning around the fortunes of Little Chef.

It goes without saying that Heston Blumenthal has his work cut out, though – how is the revolutionary, three Michelin starred proprietor of one of the world's best restaurants going to be able to improve on an Olympic Breakfast, for christ's sake? It's an impossible task!

Although generally there's nothing worse than a TV chef, we have to confess a soft spot for Heston Blumenthal. He's brilliant – unlike Gordon he doesn't control his kitchen with fear, unlike Jamie he actually cooks stuff instead of just bellowing about poor little chickens all the time, unlike Worrell he doesn't have a shit little beard, unlike Delia he doesn't just cook some frozen potato wedges and pass them off as his own and unlike Nigella he doesn't prance about in tinfoil knickers. As far as we know. 

But that's not why Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant. No, Heston Blumenthal is so brilliant because everything he does is so very breathtakingly impractical. On his BBC2 show In Search Of Perfection, Heston Blumenthal proved that he couldn't even make beans on toast without flying round the world six times, cooking a billion different beans in imperceptibly different ways, building a scale model of the CERN atom collider in his back garden out of shoes and using an oven heated by a swishing griffin's tail first.

But there'll be no more of that self-indulgent waffle, because now Heston Blumenthal has decided to use his powers for good. Well, not good exactly, but he's going to teach ailing roadside cafe chain Little Chef to cook all funny and shit. The Telegraph reports:

Now Heston Blumenthal is to bring his peculiar brand of kitchen chemistry to the Little Chef chain for a Channel 4 series this summer. The experiment will see Blumenthal take over one of the motorway cafes and re-invigorate its menu, interior and service standards. His ideas will then be implemented in all 193 outlets. Cathy Stevenson, the marketing director at Little Chef, said: "Heston will be helping us with our menu, the restaurant interiors and our training and service standards. It will be a total re-brand."

Like us, this news probably stirs up all kinds of conflicting emotions. Little Chef is a British institution, as old as motorways themselves, and we've all got fond memories of golden childhood holiday journeys broken up by stops at Little Chef for an Early Starter or some Jubilee Pancakes. The last thing we need is for some crackpot ponce to waft in and change everything around until the menu comprises nothing but lavender-scented asparagus tips and thimbles of poached quail gazpacho reduction served by waitresses dressed like leopardskin astronauts.

Then again, at the same time, we haven't been to a Little Chef for about a decade and that's because last time we went the food tasted like balls and the waitress had a face like a slapped arse. So maybe Heston Blumenthal really can turn the fortunes of Little Chef around.

Or maybe he'll bugger everything up and destroy the company forever. We don't really care either way. Like we said, we haven't been to one for a decade.

Read more:

Heston Blumenthal to transform Little Chef - Telegraph